Illustrating for children's story

by Andrew Newall
30th July 2014

Hi everyone. I'll be starting illustrations shortly for a children's story and I've been getting tips on colouring and techniques. One thing I've not been able to find is what size the artwork should be when it gets sent off to a publishers? Is there a standard size? Should I draw them on A3 and then reduce to A4 for submission?

Replies

Hi Russell and thanks for your reply. The plan was to have them on A4 paper. I figured that if they were selected for publishing, they wouldn't be printed at that size, it would be smaller. Do you think it would be more advantageous to do them A3?

This will be my first serious project like this so I'm trying to make it as easy as possible for any potential publisher.

I've done layouts in pencil and I'm now deciding on what to use for colouring.

Andy

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Andrew
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Andrew Newall
02/08/2014

Hi Andrew

My career is in design and illustration. Rule of thumb - so long as the originals are not enlarged for the publication you are ok. However, you can enlarge originals but the scanner to do this needs to be of a very good standard. Some Canon desktop scanners are good and in this case the print quality will ultimately rely upon the resolution of the images after the scanning process. The files will be pixel based so this is the point you need to ensure you have a file that does not require enlarging once placed in the artwork of the final document.

The aim is to get consistency throughout so aiming to produce the illustrations at the same size with the same scanner setting is key to great results.

Russell

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Russell
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Russell Turner
31/07/2014